The Conformist
(1970)
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The Conformist
(1970)
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Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Jean-Louis Trintignant | ... |
Marcello Clerici
(as Jean Louis Trintignant)
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Stefania Sandrelli | ... | ||
Gastone Moschin | ... |
Manganiello
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Enzo Tarascio | ... |
Professor Quadri
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Fosco Giachetti | ... |
Il colonnello
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José Quaglio | ... |
Italo
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Dominique Sanda | ... | ||
Pierre Clémenti | ... |
Lino
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Yvonne Sanson | ... |
Madre di Giulia
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Milly | ... |
Madre di Marcello
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Giuseppe Addobbati | ... |
Padre di Marcello
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Christian Aligny | ... |
Raoul
(as Christian Alegny)
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Carlo Gaddi | ... |
Hired Killer
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Umberto Silvestri | ... |
Hired Killer
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Furio Pellerani | ... |
Hired Killer
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This story opens in 1938 in Rome, where Marcello has just taken a job working for Mussollini and is courting a beautiful young woman who will make him even more of a conformist. Marcello is going to Paris on his honeymoon and his bosses have an assignment for him there. Look up an old professor who fled Italy when the fascists came into power. At the border of Italy and France, where Marcello and his bride have to change trains, his bosses give him a gun with a silencer. In a flashback to 1917, we learn why sex and violence are linked in Marcello's mind. Written by Dale O'Connor <daleoc@interaccess.com>
Brilliant adaptation (and improvement) of the Moravia work, with the entire structure revolving around Plato's Republic added by Bertolucci. As a meditation on both tyranny and the tyrannized, it is unsurpassed in cinema.
The center of the film explicitly discusses the cave image in the Republic (the topic of Marcello's abortive thesis when he was Quadri's student). But that is not all: a reading of the immediately relevant sections of the Plato will make it obvious that it provided Bertolucci with a stream of imagery for the film. A reading of the entire work will reveal an even greater stream, largely taken from the discussions of tyranny and the tyrannic man (who, like the philosopher, is the same both dreaming and awake). In turn, this all ties in nicely with both Spider's Stratagem and Before the Revolution, among others of his films.